Farewell
by HilsonFTW
Summary: Kind of a song fic I guess. If House insists it's boring or not, eventually the cancer will take over and Wilson will die. This is what'll happen as far as I'm concerned.


About two weeks ago, nearly five months into their bucket list trip, Wilson had really begun to deteriorate. He'd lost weight before, got short of breath, got gradually weaker so eventually they'd just been able to ride three or four hours a day with frequent breaks, but it had been October by the time it had really become obvious that the cancer was finally going to claim him, and soon. They'd been going east fairly steadily for the past few weeks and had got somewhere in Kentucky, near Lexington, when he'd got a massive coughing fit and brought up so much blood it stained the wet soil on the edge of the road. It had been the third time, and it had never been so bad before. House had put his arm around him, they'd got close that way over the past few months, and pronounced the dreaded words: "Time to go home, Jimmy…" Home being, under the circumstances, Centralia, PA, which they had figured would be both unpopular enough with the general populace for them to be left alone, and civilised enough for them to find somewhere half comfortable to stay. It was also at convenient driving distance to Princeton, which they had both agreed would eventually be important.

So there they were, in an abandoned house slightly off the edge of town in the woods and upwind from the fire, that had lent itself to breaking and entering and still been well preserved enough for a dying guy to be comfortable. Wilson, now thin and hollow-eyed, was lying in bed as he was most of the time now, in pain and struggling to breathe, and House was sitting on a rackety chair holding his hand, ready to spring into action if he was needed and desperately trying to ignore his bad leg. He had given Wilson the last of his stash, and so his pain level was easily at a seven. Wilson looked at him sadly. "You shouldn't have given me that Oxy." He gasped. "I'd have been fine with the pain as it was." "No, you wouldn't have been, idiot! I don't want the pain to kill you before the actual disease does!" "There won't be…" He drew breath for the second half of the sentence. "…much of a difference. I won't make it past tonight." He'd been lucky in the sense that the cancer hadn't spread to his liver and brain, but they both knew that the pleural invasion was sure to suffocate him sooner rather than later – Wilson's expert estimate probably being pretty much correct. He groaned in pain; in actual fact House's last Oxycodon hadn't been nearly enough to control it in any meaningful way and they both knew that. They looked each other in the eyes, and finally Wilson spoke. "It's time…" House got up and got a syringe from his backpack, prefilled ever since the morning they had left Princeton. "There's 400 mg in this, once I've injected it you won't come back. Are you sure?" Wilson nodded. "Yes." "Ok…" House went into autopilot doctor mode and stuck on the canula. "Anything you want to say before you go?" "Just that I love you and I'm sorry we didn't have longer. Should there be a heaven I'll be waiting for you with pizza and a couple of cans." House carefully hugged him to his chest. "And macadamia nut pancakes?" "And macadamia nut pancakes. Those past five months have been the best of my life. Thank you!" "Thank you…" House felt oddly at peace with the way things were, but at the same time was holding back tears. "Bye, Jimmy…" "Bye, Greg…" House injected the lethal dose of morphine and held Wilson in his arms until his heart had stopped, and then for a couple more minutes to make sure he was braindead before he let go.

Time to return to real life – or to life really. House made a note of the time of death, then got out his phone. "Hi…" "Hey Foreman, I need you to do something for me…" "Hey House…" Foreman didn't seem surprised: leaving the ID card in his office had obviously achieved its purpose. He did, however, seem wary. "What is it?" "I promise it's nothing that'll get you into trouble. Wilson just died. I'm outside Centralia, PA, and I need you to attend to all the bureaucracy." He swallowed hard. "I don't want him found and buried as some John Doe." "Ok…" "I'll tell you my co-ordinates now to put into your GPS. Please come as fast as you can, if you don't want to do it for me, do it for Wilson!" "I'll do it for both of you." "Thanks! And, for fuck's sake, bring morphine. I gave him the last of my painkillers and my leg is giving me 40 kinds of hell!" "Ok…" House heard the sound of Foreman getting up from his office chair. "I'm leaving now, should get there in about 2 ½ hours. Give me the co-ordinates!" "40.803327° N, 76.341735° W. It's a Sixties kind of house on the edge of the woods. I'll see you!" He finished the call.

2 ½ hours till Foreman would arrive and make sure Wilson got a decent burial. Time to lay out and wake the body. For a moment House wondered if he should pray a Kaddish, but then decided doing so would be hypocritical. He gently removed Wilson's pyjama pants, T-shirt and boxers and just as gently dressed his body in the day clothes he'd used for the last five months of his life, jeans, a hoodie, a bike jacket and heavy boots. Then he tidied up the bed as well as he could and laid out the body on top of the comforter in the middle. He went out and had a cigarette. Not that having it inside would have made a difference now, but smoking around Wilson still seemed somehow wrong, if he was alive or dead. Finally he got a bottle of Bourbon, a glass and his iPod. He poured himself a drink, sat down on the chair again and set the iPod to shuffle. Whatever music was on it he knew would be a comfort. For a while he just sat and thought, taking the occasional sip, half-listening to the music, occasionally touching the hunk of flesh that had been Wilson as it cooled, even carefully kissing it. He wanted to say good-bye physically, but he knew too much touching would make the body deteriorate faster.

Suddenly he perked up. When had he put that on the iPod, gosh! Kris Kristofferson?

"Busted flat in Baton Rouge, headin' for the trains,  
Feelin' near as faded as my jeans..."

He felt a lot more faded than that actually, and that didn't mean his Levi's were in particularly good nick.

"Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained,  
Took us all the way to New Orleans."

He thought of New Orleans, how could he not? It was the place where it had all begun for them, and the first one they'd gone back to that lifetime ago that had been the beginning to their road trip. They'd gone back to the place where they had first met, only to find the bar there had fallen victim to Katrina, so instead they'd found themselves a new bar that had Leave a tender Moment alone on the juke box and played it to death while slowly getting legless on Bourbon and beer, and undoubtedly introducing a whole new generation of NOLA tourists to the concept of hating a good song to the point of fury. A lot had happened since…

"Took my harpoon out of my dirty red bandana  
And was blowin' sad while Bobby sang the blues,  
With them windshield wipers slappin' time and  
Bobby clappin' hands we finally sang up every song  
That driver knew."

That idea made him laugh in spite of himself. Whatever about his own abilities on the blues harp, which were ok, Wilson knew about as much about the blues as the average boy band member and couldn't sing to save his life. Had known about, that was, and hadn't been able to sing. Wilson was, as of half an hour ago, officially part of the past.

"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose,  
And nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free,  
Feelin' good was easy, Lord, when Bobby sang the blues,  
And buddy, that was good enough for me,  
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee."

Yup… They'd been free together, and it had been good. But now?

"From the coalmines of Kentucky to the California sun,  
Bobby shared the secrets of my soul…"

About six weeks into their trip, basking in a hidden hot spring near Truth or Consequences, NM, to be precise. It had done his leg the world of good and they'd both been more relaxed and talkative than ever before, far beyond their usual banter. House had done the teenagers on the couch thing ending up with his arm around Wilson, and hadn't met with objections. On the contrary, Wilson had put his head into the crook of his neck and replicated the embrace. They'd kissed, gently and carefully at first, then passionately. Later they'd had sex, and finally confessed how they really felt about each other. Life had been even better from then on.

"Standin' right beside me through everythin' I done,  
And every night she kept me from the cold."

For over 20 years they'd done that, and he wished they'd managed to do it as lovers earlier. He felt himself tearing up and blinked to make it go away. He was 53 years old, for fuck's sake, not a cry baby!

"Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away,  
She was lookin' for the home I hope she'll find…"

Well thank goodness things had lasted longer than that, and for a split second House hoped there was indeed a heaven, because fuck knew Wilson had deserved to go there. He remembered everything they'd still had since they'd turned their bikes northwards in California, riding through Muir Woods, on to Oregon and Washington state, meandering eastwards towards the continental divide, spending a couple of days in the Big Horns hanging out and fishing. They'd bought cowboy hats and introduced themselves to the locals as Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar just for the hell of it. Then further east, through the Great Plains, through miles and miles of yellow fields, making a detour to catch some music for House in Chicago – Wilson had insisted – then going further south again while still heading in a generally eastern direction. They'd known the good times would soon come to and end and wanted to be close enough to Centralia when it would happen to they could easily make it there.

"Well I'd trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday,  
Holdin' Bobby's body close to mine."

He could hold back to longer. Even just a single minute before the time that had passed since Wilson had slipped away would have been… no, not more than enough. Nothing would ever have been enough. He cried for about ten minutes. Nothing left to lose…

Finally Foreman arrived. He squeezed House's shoulder. "Sorry for your troubles…" "Thanks…" "You look like shit, want me to inject you with the Morphine?" "Yeah…" Foreman gave him 20 mg of relief. "Are you gonna go clean again after this?" "I guess I'll have to…" "Yeah…" Foreman issued Wilson's death certificate, stating the cause of death to be asphyxiation due to advanced pleural invasion of state IV thymoma. "Did it happen… naturally?" "No. He was hours away from death, we both knew that. He hardly had enough breath left to say three words, and there was nothing we could do to manage the pain anymore." "So what now?" "You'll inform his friends and family of his death, take care of the bureaucracy and organise the funeral. It shouldn't be hard, we wrote down his instructions together." He teared up again. Foreman let him cry for a bit, patting his back. "You've changed, House…" "I know…" He found himself smirking. "I've experienced the love of a good man." "Finally?" "Finally…" "Still… What now?" "After all that stuff is taken care of you can escort me to the closest police station and I'll turn myself in." "Ok…" They sat together for a while. Eventually Foreman gently took the body's hands in his. "Bye, Wilson…"


End file.
